A total of 13 UK businesses have won funding from the Technology Strategy Board (Swindon / UK; www.innovateuk.org) for research and development into plastic electronics technology. Eight companies have been awarded a total of GBP 7.4m (EUR 8.9m) to help build a supply chain and overcome some of the barriers businesses face in taking a new and innovative product to market. Another five companies share around GBP 1m to fund the roll-out of projects to help encourage UK businesses to adopt the new technology in their product development.

The global market for plastic electronics is forecast to rise from USD 2 bn (EUR 1.6 bn) to USD 120 bn in 2020. According to Iain Gray, chief executive of the Technology Strategy Board, “The UK is among the world leaders in plastic electronics and the opportunities to be a major part of a whole new manufacturing sector are very real.”

One of the innovative projects will seek to show that it is possible to manufacture a printed lighting panel, or polymer light-emitting diode luminaire, that can be used in a range of aesthetic designs. It is being led by Thorn Lighting (Borehamwood / UK; www.thornlighting.co.uk) and participants include Cambridge Display Technology (Cambridge / UK; www.cdtltd.co.uk) and Conductive Inkjet Technologies (Cambridge / UK; www.conductiveinkjet.com), a subsidiary of Carclo (www.carclo.co.uk). After development and demonstration of the process, a manufacturing technique will be proved and tested at the Printable Electronics Technology Centre (Sedgefield / UK; www.uk-cpi.com/petec).